LAST WEEK (44/2018) IN THE FINNISH GAME INDUSTRY

Play Finland’s Weekly Newsletter
In this report we will combine  week 44/2018 from the Finnish Game Industry.
News are gathered from the Play Finland group posts during the week. That is why we recommend you to post by yourself (however not flood) your Finnish Game Industry related news to the group. It also guarantees that your news will be visible in the weekly newsletter /news compilation. Play Finland is at the moment one of the main channels for sharing information inside the industry.

 
Events:

• 7th Nov. Tasapeliseminaari / Helsinki
• 9th Nov. The Finland Unity User Group is visiting Apprien
• 10th Nov. DevCon Tampere 2018
• 10-11th November. Theme Park. Digital art rally 2018 / Kouvola
• 14th Nov. Xmasjkl – The Finnish Game Industry Seminar / Jyväskylä
  • Mika Rahko, Futureplay
  • Lauri Vuohensilta, Hydraulic Press Channel
  • Adam Sporka, Composer, Kingdom Come Deliverance
  • Jussi Immonen, Nitro Games
    ..and more announcements coming soon!We are super happy to have COOL people coming again as a our speaker to 2018 event at Jyväskylä, Central Finland
  • The Finnish Game Industry Seminar now annual event already 4th time!
  • You can also book the demo stand with 80€
  • NightStop playing at #XmasJKL
• 19-23 November 2018, Nanjing: IMGA Judging Sessions, China Game Design Seminar and the Awards Ceremony & Parties
• 20th Nov. IGDA Finland Turku Hub November event with Platonic Partnership
• 22 November Manse Games Event / Tampere
  • Teut Weidemann joins to talk about F2P game monetisation.
  • Petri Ikonen. The talk will focus on how the studio overcame the obstacles of designing a F2P mobile game from a well-loved IP, and how their design thinking has changed during production and running the live service.
  • Third speaker will be Co-Founder of GameRefinery Joel Julkunen. Joel will be comparing the US mobile game market with several Asian markets and focus on their differences in various areas. During this talk we will learn which genres, game features & mechanics and visual styles are hot and which are not.
  • Fourth speaker will be Kalle Kaivola! Kalle has worked on games for two decades as a producer, publisher and most recently investor as a partner in Sisu Game Ventures.
  • Fifth speaker will be Google’s Industry Manager Juho Juhantalo. Juho is your first touchpoint to Google in mobile gaming in the Northern European region. 
  • Founder of Cellense Ivan Trancik. Ivan with his team at Cellense have worked to launch and scale over 50 games with over 2 billion downloads. They have been working with fast growing game studios like Fingersoft, Frogmind, BoomBit, DoDreams and many others.
• 23-25 November Junction / Helsinki
• 4-5th Dec. Slush
• 25-27th January Global Game Jam  if you want to run a site, apply now!
• 29th January Games First London 2019
• 22-24th May Nordic Game Conference / Helsinki
  • Gaming Track

See also The Game Industry Events calendar: http://www.neogames.fi/en/events/eventcalendar
Neogames is creating a tool for the city of Helsinki summarising all key games industry related events in Helsinki
Open jobs & Recruitment

• Taike on julkaissut pelitaiteeseen erikoistuvan läänintaiteilijan paikan hakuun
• GamePro training program open now. Apply before Nov. 19th
• Get your self matched in Game Factory Talents. Find your place in the Finnish Games Industry
  • Games Factory Talents have introduced a new platform to make your talent visible for the game studios. They are building a community of developers to showcase, making it easier for the game studios to find the talent they need.
  • “Instead of building a platform only for job seeking game industry professionals, we wanted a platform where the game studios could come and meet the talent even before they start the long and expensive process of advertising an open job position. Our Talent Board features industry professionals from all levels of experience to most of the various positions studios might be looking to fill”, explains Kim Bäckroos, CEO of the newly formed Games Factory Talents.
  • New talent is being added to the Talent Board constantly, and Games Factory Talents are inviting all industry professionals and game studios to take part. Head over Games Factory Talents to look at the talent and job positions available and make yourself visible for the hiring studios.Follow Games Factory Talents on social media for the latest news and information on any upcoming talent acquisition events.
  • https://www.linkedin.com/company/gamesfactorytalents
  • https://www.instagram.com/gamesfactorytalents
• Jobs in Games: Rovio’s Heini Kaihu on how to get a job as head of studio.
  • if people are interested in taking part in ‘Jobs in Games’ series feel free to get in touch with Craig Chapple!

Releases;

• GOTO Labs has created incredible tools for #gamedevs and now are available for FREE! Check it out. Also you can talk to devs directly at their Discord channel, join here:

Announcements;

• DECA Games acquires Zombie Catchers from Two Man and The Dog! New content and expansion planned for the game’s 55 million users.
• Neogames is updating the list of active Finnish Game Developers. Please see the list from the link. Please let us know (in this post or suviATneogamesDOTfi) if your company is missing. It is required that listed company is registered in YTJ and is regularly releasing games or is developing those in full time.
• Neogames is listing Finnish games released globally (and for first time) on 2018. Please help and make sure that yours are listed! and please let suviATneogamesDOTfi know if there are mistakes.

Other News;

• Games Now! Lecture: Idle Games Deep Dive at Mon. 12th Now
• Zynga’s Helsinki studio is working on a new FarmVille mobile game.
• Players decide what they want to play. Finnish mobile game startup Round Zero takes a new approach to game publishing with data-driven marketing and user acquisition. –  Pelaajat päättävät mikä toimii. Oululainen Round Zero uudistaa pelijulkaisualaa datapohjaisella markkinoinnilla ja käyttäjähankinnalla. Business Finland on ollut arvokkaana apuna tuotekehityksen nopeuttamisessa.
• Talouselämä on kerännyt vuoden 2012 jälkeen tiedot yhteensä 712 pääomasijoituksesta suomalaisiin yrityksiin. Se tarjoaa mahdollisuuden analysoida ja seurata tiiviisti sitä, mitä startup-kentällä tapahtuu. Yhteensä Kasvuyritykset-sivulla on listattu rahoituksia 1,3 miljardin euron edestä.
• Still Running is releasing The Walking Vegetables: Radical Edition is coming to Nintendo Switch in two weeks.

This is the weekly summary of news from the Finnish game  industry. If you want to have your news on the list, post them on the Play Finland Facebook group. The summary will be posted every Friday afternoon. Check out previous week’s list.